SEO Audit: 3 Analysis to Improve Performance of a Wedding Marketplace

Mar 10, 2019

wedding marketplace seo audit

I audited theknot.com as part of an SEO manager interview. The following points are my own observation so you may or may not find these points useful.

1. Optimize Speed

There are rooms to optimize speed both on desktop and mobile. It is difficult because there are different internet connections and devices with different software and hardware settings. On July 9, 2018 Google said, page speed is a ranking factor both for desktop and mobile searches. So we must dedicate resources to improve speed.

Desktop and mobile performance metrics from chrome devtools
The screenshot is taken from Chrome DevTools Lighthouse audit

Here are some suggestions to improve speed

  • Resource Hints

Resource Hints help the browser find the resources it will need, and download them ahead of time for better performance. theknot.com/marketplace require resources from the following third party origins and resource hints could be applied there to improve speed.

chrome devtools security panel
The screenshot is taken from Chrome DevTools security panel

Here is The Guardian, a British daily newspaper is using resource hints to optimize its speed.

the guardian source code
The Guardian newspaper resource prioritization
  • CSS

CSS is key to performance and critical to rendering a page. By default, CSS is treated as a render blocking resource. According to my audit, there are rooms to optimize CSS.

chrome lighthouse optimization audit
The screenshot is taken from Chrome DevTools Lighthouse audit

Any CSS not needed to render the current view is effectively lazyloaded by the browser. We should take advantage of this feature by splitting the current CSS file into individual media queries. Please see the screenshot below for better understanding. Also, if possible we should move the CSS files to the main origin.

google developer documentation
The Screenshot is taken from developers.google.com


  • JavaScript

JavaScript is an expensive resource and it is complex to maintain it. Here are a couple of suggestions to use it in a way to improve speed. Whenever possible the script should be loaded asynchronously. For instance the Optimizely script should use the asynchronous tag to improve speed.

chrome devtools lighthouse audit on optimizely script
The screenshot is taken from Chrome DevTools Lighthouse audit


chrome devtools elements panel
The screenshot is taken from Chrome DevTools

Third party scripts are always expensive. This specific page theknot.com/marketplace is using around 50 third party scripts. We should talk to dev team to understand the importance of those scripts and if possible remove the unnecessary ones.

We should embed script directly via a tag or at least adding a preload tag. Please see the screenshot to understand better.

The screenshot is taken from www.twnsnd.com

JavaScript is specifically expensive on mobile devices. Most of the traffic these days are coming from mobile devices and mobile internet speed is usually weak.

javascript cost breakdown from addy osmani post
The screenshot is taken from www.medium.com


That’s why Google is adding new features to Chrome’s android version like automatically download articles for later reading, data saver and more recent rumor is Chrome for Android may start disabling JavaScript on 2G connections. theknot.com/marketplace should be better prepared for this.

theknot.com broken user interface
Disabling JS broke the UI and links are not working



Here is NPR better prepared with their text version of the site https://text.npr.org/. Chrome is suggesting to use the APIs like navigator.connection.saveData and navigator.connection.effectiveType to tap into users device settings and provide webpages based on that.

NPR tweet on their text version
NPR tweet during Hurricane Florence


chrome dev summit 2018
The screenshot is taken from Chrome Dev Summit 2018

2. Optimize User Interface

We should offer an option like save your search without login as bestbuy.com to make the search experience better. We also should add text/SMS and email to easily share the search experience with partners, friends, parents, and relatives.

bestbuy.com save for later feature
The screenshot is taken from Bestbuy.com


We could also offer features like browsing story as besbuy.com to personalize the search experience

bestbuy.com shopping history
The screenshot is taken from Bestbuy.com


Features like checking venue availability date, an option to text and email share the venue, signup using google credential API, helpful and critical review comparison table, more options to filter search and a clean UI would attract and engage more users than the competitors like weddingwire.com

pinterest google credential API
The screenshot is taken from pinterest.com


google express review comparison table
The screenshot is taken from express.google.com


3. Optimize Google Search Index

site:www.theknot.com/marketplace –inurl:https, this site operator reveals a number of HTTP pages are indexed by Google. We should investigate the sitemap and log files to find out the reasons.

google site search operator
Google site search operator


google cached page
Page from Google’s cache


site:*.theknot.com –inurl:https, this site operator displays pages from http://forums.theknot.com, http://global.theknot.com are being indexed by Google. We should make those pages secured and aesthetically elegant to attract more users.

pages from theknot.com subdomains
Google indexed pages


Robots file



Duplicate contents and faceted navigation issues need to be addressed.

duplicate contents
Duplicate content


faceted navigation
Faceted navigation

site:theknot.com/marketplace –inurl:www, this site operator displays a number of unwanted pages indexed by Google. Steps are needed to prevent pages like this to be indexed.

Unwanted pages indexed by google
Staging environment pages indexed by Google

SEO is sort of associated with everything we do on a website. Hopefully, the team at theknot.com would find some of these points useful to optimize their site for the search engines.

Lastly, here are a couple of the folks who are skilled at web performance optimization you may wanna follow them on Twitter.

Tim Kadlec: https://twitter.com/tkadlec

Patrick Meenan: https://twitter.com/patmeenan

Addy Osmani: https://twitter.com/addyosmani

Ryan Townsend: https://twitter.com/RyanTownsend

Katie Hempenius: https://twitter.com/katiehempenius

Harry Roberts: https://twitter.com/csswizardry

Henri Helvetica: https://twitter.com/HenriHelvetica

Andy Davies: https://twitter.com/AndyDavies

Lina Hansson: https://twitter.com/LinaCHansson